Amelia shuddered involuntarily. She had initially been worried about Forsythe. That he might have to sit out the last and final battle had been vexing. His food, his company, and his presence were invaluable to the rest of them. Now, watching this display, she could only think that her worry had been incredibly naive. Somehow or another she had always viewed him as the weakest of the three. Raven who couldn’t lose, Aidan who could think his way out of any situation, and Forsythe who complemented the other two. Now, she realized, she had been mistaken since the beginning. Forsythe was the unshakable and unstoppable one who somehow managed to avoid the majority of the limelight. He was the one you put in the front when you absolutely needed to clinch a small or big victory.

Perhaps spurred on by his query, Queen sunk her front claws into the floor again. Forsythe fell to the ground, anticipating when he didn’t see them in his field of vision in front of him that they would come from behind him. He was confident that he had the timing down and his movement suggested he was unworried. His health bar flashed a warning again, another 30% health lost. Half-health warnings began to crop up on the side indicating the direction of the attack. He looked down, and Amelia startled, realizing that the claws had come up from the floor. She supposed it made sense that an attack that could come from anywhere didn’t have to come from the open air.

The entire arena where they silently battled was dark after all. Forsythe rolled away from the claws, watching them sink into the floor before standing once more. He brushed the non-existent dust off his shirt and turned back to Queen, who was once again using her sizzling laughter at his predicament.

“Command, Activate Sword Offensive Abilities,” Forsythe called. He once again adopted the stance where his swordpoint lazily pointed at the Queen.

“I smell your fear now.” Queen taunted him. She seemed to swell and grow in size, filling the cavern even as strange darkness flickered out and toward Forsythe as if it would engulf him and swallow him whole. The image on the screen made her seem suddenly twenty times larger than him.

---------------------------------

Local Announcement - Queen’s Fear Aura

The Queen senses the inevitability of the predator and prey situation. Her murderous killing intent is enough to send even the most stalwart hearted into a panic.

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Effect: Immune

Forsythe watched her, tilting his head again, and after a moment the size illusion aura vanished. Her aura attack had been no match for his Invincible Morale. Invincible appeared in silver above his head as if to emphasize his half-smile. “Yes? Very scary.”

Wordlessly enraged, the nightmare creature sunk its claws into the floor once more and also stabbed with her tail. Forsythe hopped to the left immediately, glancing over in time to see the claws and the tail pass harmlessly where he had been standing. Queen repeated the attack with much the same effect.

“Ah, she can choose where they come out but she can’t change her mind quick enough to get him.” Elisha pointed. “So if he moves out from the spot where he was as she does it she can’t reach him. That’s…”

“Genius.” Hunter finished. “I mean it seems simple when you see it but thinking of it when you just got smacked in the face with your first counter. In the total dark. Alone.”

Amelia smiled but felt like being a bit childish. “I don’t see what’s so smart about dodging around.”

Amelia received a few betrayed looks.

“Command, Sacrifice Sword Offensive Abilities.” Forsythe turned slightly, eyeing his opponent. “I’ll be dodging for a bit. Attack to your heart’s content.” Forsythe suggested to Queen. She began doing just that, and he began hopping out of the way or running forward or backward. It was all very random like he was just deciding which direction to go purely on a whim. All the while Queen never moved. Amelia began to wonder if that was the drawback of this particular attack series, that it required her to be stationary.

Forsythe began glancing up occasionally, and after a moment Amelia realized he was taking his time dodging in order to regenerate health while in combat. Normal regeneration in combat was incredibly slow and almost worthless. However, it seemed if you could avoid being struck and were in no particular hurry it would eventually start to replace whole percentages of your health bar.

“54% after 10 minutes,” Aidan said finally, sighing. “Knowing him he’ll probably just wait until 100%. That’s what?”

Elisha immediately suggested the remaining amount of time it would take.

“So smart.” Hunter grinned, hugging a suddenly irked looking Elisha. Amelia could tell she hadn’t meant to answer so quickly and by her scowl didn’t appreciate having it pointed out that it had been a little too fast.

Amelia continued to watch, spellbound by the warrior that danced on one foot to avoid attacks in the dark. Even if this was going to keep going for a long time she wanted to watch. She started to smile.

“Creepy smile.” Aidan pointed. “I’ll get you a chair. You can watch him.”

“You’re not going to watch?” Amelia asked, honestly surprised.

“You can let us know when he does something different. Besides, he’s only uploading hour clips at a time so you’ll have to keep reloading them as they become available. Since there’s another hour clip after this we know it doesn’t exactly end here.” Aidan said, disappearing before she had a chance to say anything. He reappeared with a chair and a bag of insta-pop popcorn. He pulled the tab and it immediately steamed, the self-heating container started popping indicating it was making the popcorn. He handed her the bag, which she took gratefully as she sank into the chair. Every time a kernel popped she did jump a little. It was a little weird watching the horror show on the light curtain with pops happening intermittently with the action.

It was largely as predicted by Aidan. There were a few times when the Queen managed to surprise Forsythe with random attacks, but he deflected them wholesale. That isn’t to say everything was going his way. Amelia noted that while his health continued to go up, so did the Queen’s. Her regeneration seemed to be faster than his and she would be maxed out in no time. Despite this Forsythe made no move to attack her, instead, he seemed to be devoting himself to dodging and waiting. The clip ended in the middle of a scathing attack from the Queen and Amelia had to get up and start the next one in the series. There appeared to be one more after this, which she supposed made sense. The next clip would be in large part a continuation of the Forsythe acrobatic show if Elisha’s math was right. Which, Amelia concentrated for a moment to confirm it for herself since she had never bothered to, it was.

“What is your plan sweetmeat?” Queen asked at one point. The nightmare creature had reached the conclusion that while Forsythe wasn’t attacking her she had no way to deal him a decisive blow. Eventually, he would get tired, that was for sure, but that seemed hours from now. It was the first time the creature had displayed its impatience.

“Why, is that everything?” Forsythe asked. This time there was an edge behind his voice. Queen paused in her attacks for a moment and regarded him silently, then just as quickly she resumed her attacks and they fought their nightmare battle in continued silence. There was a frantic movement to her attacks now. Faster and less certain, more random in their desperation. It helped her not at all.

The moment finally arrived when Forsythe had just hit 100% health. Queen had long ago arrived at maximum health but hadn’t seemed to switch back to her earlier mode of fighting. If anything her attacks were haphazard, fast, and stronger than ever. Her silence spoke volumes about how she thought the fight was going. Before her fighting style had been loud and punctuated by hisses of aggression.

-----------------------

DING

Combat Mastery Level reached - Master Advanced Level 9

--------------------

Amelia supposed that even only using one set of abilities still raised Combat Mastery.

“Command, Activate Sword Offensive Abilities,” Forsythe said simply. The remainder of the clip was a dazzling display of sword skill as Forsythe slowly whittled down Queen’s Health Bar past the 33% marker. It faded just when Queen started to back up, looking like she had yet another trick in her repertoire.

“Aidan!” Amelia called out into the hallway. It wasn’t long before Elisha, Raven, and Aidan crowded in the room with her, excited and expectant as all turned their eyes toward the screen. “This is the last clip so far. I’m guessing he finishes in the next 30 minutes.”

“Why is he still in the game then?” Elisha wondered.

“Cooking,” Raven said immediately. “He is probably eating her right now.”

The group shuddered as one, earning a strange look from Hunter who entered the room airily. “I have about an hour and a half before I need to go do some volunteer work on the kid ward.”

Amelia didn’t think it was fair that someone that pretty looked that good in a nurse’s standard blue scrubs. She eyed Hunter up and down for a long moment and finally shook her head softly. Aidan, damn him, never missed a thing. He smirked at her.

“Hey, for Halloween we should all be nurses. Except for Hunter, she can be a mummy and we can run after her screaming ‘escaped! stop her!’ the whole time.” Aidan grinned, earning strange stares from all of them.

“Why am I the mummy?” Hunter wanted to know.

“Because you’re usually the nurse?” Aidan answered quizzically as if it were self-explanatory. Elisha furrowed her eyebrows and pursed her lips as she started to question what that had to do with anything.

Any further discussion was halted by a hissing that came from the clip which was continuing. The sounds of sword on claws had halted, replaced by the low hissing of danger. “What are you?” Queen demanded, crouching low. Her health bar flashed red over and over, indicating that the remainder of her 30% health was critical. This was where most boss creatures finally displayed their full power and ferocity.

“I am... angry.” Forsythe allowed, very slowly. He raised his sword and stared directly at her, the food buff having been refreshed at some point earlier in a previous clip. It made her appearance flash dramatically from yellow to red in his sight. Another indication of her low health and sudden increased lethality.

“Oh, wow,” Raven whispered. “He really is mad. He forgot he’s streaming and is talking a lot.”

“Yeah. I don’t think he would say that if he knew we were listening. He’s always so in control.” Hunter agreed.

“Anger is no explanation for your insanity,” Queen argued.

“How many have died here to sate your hunger. In the dark, alone, away from their family. I’m going to eat you. That is all. Probably with some sort of juice.” Forsythe started forward, closing the 10-meter distance decisively. His cold voice cut out at her once more. “Is that all? Is that everything? I have witnessed it and now I’ve lost interest.”

“Monster!” She spat at him. She lowered her head and charged at him, suddenly disregarding the strange teleportation of limbs attack strategy. Or at least that’s what it seemed. She sprang at him from the front and leapt, angling her tail from underneath in a tail spear. Her front claws disappeared into sudden mysterious dark pools. She was faster than before and apparently strengthened by desperation. Claws appeared on the peripheral of Forsythe’s vision. She was using the teleportation of limbs ability with a direct frontal assault. The claws closed in from the sides and the tail from the front.

“I told you. I lost interest.” Forsythe whipped his sword from left to right, knocking the claws away as they were immediately close and parried the tail as it closed in on him. The Queen Grendel hissed as it pounced the remainder of the distance with its back leg talons displayed and its jaws closing toward him. She would still knock him to the ground and bite at him.

“[Riposte - Godspeed Thrust].”

The Queen Grendel jerked from the impact as the blade pierced her body directly on her face, and then on her two back talons. She collided with him from the momentum of her movement but he simply turned and shrugged her over a shoulder. The giant reptilian body spun off him from the impact and she skidded past on the floor. She started to right herself but Amelia could see it was already too late. Forsythe had simply turned, crossed the distance, and stood above her now.

“[Final Form - Direct Cut].”

What happened next was hard to describe. If there had been color or a surrounding environment that had any more detail there would have been more to the attack. Instead, they just saw a thin line of red flash briefly from left to right at about neck level of the Queen Grendel, and she shrank back to the floor as if waiting for something. Moments later the head slid cleanly from the body, which thrashed for a long moment before it lay still. The body remained, as they sometimes did when the corpse was usable in some fashion.

Amelia shuddered at the thought.

-----------------------------------

Local Announcement - Queen Grendel Defeated!

Joy fills the air! All those aware of the impossible and terrifying existence raise their heads exultantly. She is dead! She is dead! The whispers turn to cheers!

[Calculating Reputations]

Rewards: Experience. Level up(15x) 398 old to 412 new level.

Skills Separated and Awarded:

[Total Defense] - Warriors skill allowing for 50% increase to defense at cost of all offensive skills.

[Total Offense] - Warriors skill allowing for 50% increase to offense at cost of all defensive skills.

The warrior has discovered stance twisting over a long duration battle at a high level!

----------------------------------------

When Forsythe dismissed the window Amelia let out a low whistle. The impossible Health Bar of Forsythe read very clearly and strong in the upper left corner through it all, 100%. “Oh. Right.” Forsythe moved forward as if he had remembered what he had been doing. Moments later the clip dissolved into true blackness, and then a replay button appeared on the light curtain. It was almost as if fate had mercifully decided they didn’t need to watch him ‘clean’ the Queen Grendel.

“Mm.” Hunter breathed luxuriously, a strange expression of euphoria on her face.

“Mom!” Elisha whined, embarrassed at the sound her mother made in response to Forsythe.

“Sorry! He’s just kinda hot!” Hunter flushed and stared at her daughter, biting back a laugh.

“You can’t say things like that!?” Elisha was beet red.

“Like what?” Forsythe was removing his visor and sitting upright, looking around the room. He seemed a bit perplexed that everyone was standing nearby looking at a replay button on the light curtain.

“Forsythe, will you cook me dinner tonight?” Hunter grinned, ignoring Elisha. Indeed, it felt like the entire room had left her vision except for Forsythe.

“Yes? I was thinking of a nice pizza but maybe not. It is not a very romantic answer to a direct request.” Forsythe said slowly, looking around casually. “In the game tomorrow I am going to ask you all to eat some new dish I have found.”

“Rejected.” Aidan flat out refused.

“No freaking way,” Raven said at the same moment.

“I’ll try it…” Amelia said grimly as if she were agreeing to a really unthinkable scenario.

“Will you teach me to make pizza?” Elisha asked, interposing herself between him and her mother.

“Yes. The key is making sure the ingredients are distributed thinly enough to cook well with the crust, in addition to maintaining a tasty balance of ingredients for each bite.” Forsythe explained to her. Elisha nodded solemnly with wide eyes, once again humoring him.